Last October, after a public inquiry, we announced our decision to relaunch our platform. We relaunched on 11/29/2018. With the sun setting on 2019, this an ideal time to reflect on our progress and overall direction.

Our niche is the development of data and technology resources in the Title IX space. We have adopted a laser-focus on this approach because it is the area best suited to our skillset, where we provide less redundancy and greater effectiveness relative to other organizations to whom we can instead simply make referrals for other matters, and because it is where we get the most traction overall. We have also learned that in order to develop resources of the quality, scope, and scale that we envision, such resources cannot be side projects – hence our focus.

With our data work, we aim to provide robust, well-rounded, powerful resources with all the considerations that database professionals bring to the table. This includes not just data accuracy and the impact of developed features, but also considerations of the user experience in terms of accessibility, navigation, and security. When people sign up to our Title IX Lawsuits Database or donate to our organization they fund more than just the maintenance of our resources; they also fund their continued development.

We currently have a database of lawsuits by respondents to higher ed Title IX investigations (Title IX Lawsuits Database). We maintain this resource in addition to performing other operations such as newsletters and social media, public speaking, counseling, referrals, networking, and writing.

New Staff

We relaunched our platform with the addition of Samay Taylor. She has performed much of the data entry and social media work for our organization and assisted in the testing of new database features. Her contributions have been essential to ramping up the overall scale and scope of our databases.

Getting the Word Out

We’ve been consistently raising awareness of due process and related Title IX issues. Our work has drawn the attention of media organizations across the political spectrum, legal journals, campus safety organizations, advocacy groups, legal entities, local and campus newspapers, and others.

Interestingly, the day after our platform was relaunched our organization was listed in a “Resource Guide for Respondents” by Texas A&M International University. We were recently interviewed for the CBS Documentary “Speaking Frankly: Title IX.” The statistics in the documentary come from our work, and we are cited in CBS’ article for the documentary. Our work was also cited in the Notre Dame Law Review, the New York Post, and letters to the Department of Education regarding DeVos’ proposed Title IX regulations. We, of course, submitted our own comments and review of DeVos’ proposed regulations. In August, we also spoke at the International Conference of Men’s Issues about developments in Title IX litigation.

Our social media channels have also been buzzing with more activity and engagement than all previous years of our organization’s existence.

Title IX Lawsuits Database: Aggressive Development

If you could summarize our work with this database in 2019 with a phrase, it would be aggressive development. When we relaunched the Title IX Lawsuits Database, we promised ten consecutive monthly expansions to database resources, released at the end of each month. We have fulfilled that promise and will be implementing more upgrades in the future.

We started tracking lawsuits in 2013. In the last year, we have expanded the database more than all previous years combined, both in terms of features and overall data. That’s something to celebrate. If anyone were to view the pre-launch and current versions of the database side-by-side the difference would be as night and day. To give you an idea of the growth, below are some differences between the pre-launch and current versions. In the last ten months we have:

• Expanded the total number of Title IX-related lawsuits to 542, more than doubling the pre-relaunch number of 220 lawsuits.
• Multiplied the total number of legal documents by a factor of ten in ten months. We currently have ~89,000 pages of legal files.
• Expanded the total number of data points by a factor of one hundred, from ~5,500 to an incredible ~496,000 data points. The total amount of data is truly massive at this point.
• Radically expanded existing attorney and law firm data. We now have info on 1,237 Title IX attorneys and 612 law firms.
• Vastly expanded court and judge data to include 540 judges across 206 state and federal courts which have seen Title IX litigation.
• Opened up entirely new sections of data. For example, we now track 80 types of legal claims, Clery Act data, and the scope of school Title IX investigations (dating violence, harassment, stalking, etc.).
• Consistently added new features, such as videos of oral arguments, options to “save” lawsuits, expanded search engines, a changelog, and so forth.

We’ve done this while taking opportunities along the way to reduce database load speeds and make other interface improvements.

The Future

We’re excited about what the future will bring. We are constructing additional resources, and we will announce their scope and features soon. Some will be free, while others will require a fee proportionate to the costs to produce and maintain them. Some may only be available for a limited time as we test the waters to see how they will be received and if they are worthy of further development.

In addition to new resources, we will continue improving our existing ones. Upcoming developments to existing databases include adding new data categories, easing accessibility, enhancing navigation and search tools, other user interface changes, and so forth. We can’t give any more details on these upgrades just yet, but make sure you are signed up to our email newsletter for future announcements.

In 2019, 90% of our activity has not been on the titleixforall.com website per se, but on our databases (which were accessed at a separate domain) or our social media channels. The activity that has been featured on our website has mostly consisted of periodically published articles or announcements.

In 2020, we’ll be centering more activity on our main website so that it can be a hub to view and access all our activity. You’ve seen some of this already with the recent integration of our databases into our main website. We’d also like to increase the frequency of published articles, revive our YouTube channel, and explore new types of channels as well.

I wanted to touch base on donations, a topic we have not brought up in a long time. We still provide several free resources and services, such as newsletters, and analysis, counseling, and referrals. Donations help with that. If you like our general direction and philosophy, we encourage you to donate at this link. Alternatively, you can always sign up for our Title IX Lawsuits Database.

On behalf of our team, I’d like to thank you for following and supporting our work. We look forward to an innovative, impactful, and productive 2020!